Apple Barn, Indian Ladder Farms, Altamont, New York July 18, 2008

I’m a part of a theater group that is performing 3 plays in a festival at Indian Ladder Farms starting next week. Tonight, I have another rehearsal there, a full run-through of our New Directors Project/Original Play “festival.” (I put festival in quotes, because it’s just one new play, a wonderful one, but a festival implies more than one.)

Anyway, the place definitely has a spirit. I’m not sure if it’s the apple barn where we’re going to be performing or the farm itself. Last year in performing during the First Annual Helderberg Theater Festival, I wasn’t really attuned to the energies of the place itself, but last night, I noticed a pattern start to emerge there that I wondered about.

A number of us, myself included, were having difficulty remembering simple words. I had a hard time getting out the concept of “spike tape.” I was saying, “you know, Greg. That tape you were talking about earlier, the rainbow tape?” And he knew what I was talking about, but it took him a moment or two to come up with the word. Others were having similar issues.

I know some things about Indian Ladder Farms. Not a lot, so I won’t make the sorcerer’s apprentice mistake of speaking before I have more information, but it seems that the spirits of the apple barn and by extension of the land nearby it, have some sort of energetic stagnation at the very least. I feel that tonight I shall have to sage the place because I sense that it’s not a helpful energy for our show. I will need to ask it to take a vacation from the apple barn, at least while we are doing our play. Or to ask it if there are offerings we can make to propitiate it should that not be feasible. I’m not sure if this extends to the whole farm, or if it’s just the barn itself, but there’s definitely a spirit there, and it’s one that I think wants to help, but there must be something that’s annoying it.

The apple barn is a wonderful place to do a show, btw, especially after the sun goes down. There’s a wonderful glow, even with just the flood lights on in the corner. The spirit of the barn has a mellow and loving warmth. I think the spirit is a she, and I think she LOVES the original play. She is very kind to it, whereas the David Ives plays seem to be “not to her taste.” (Hopefully she doesn’t consider them offensive, but there is a decided air-fire bias in them.) It might also be nice when the sun is higher in the sky–I won’t know until a week from Sunday whether that will be the case. We will have a good show, though in this week before we open, there’s all sorts of little things that haven’t been done and the little things are like pawns in a chess game. Underrate their importance at your own risk.